Word games have been one of the most popular genres on mobile, ever since the platform took off as the new way to kill time on the way to work or school. There's no shortage of them on both iOS and Android, so we picked the very best for you to get stuck into.

Letterpress

Letterpress is a devilishly competitive game that tasks players with forming words from a five-by-five grid of letters. Whenever you spell a word, the corresponding letters change to your color, but your competitor can reclaim that color by forming another word using the same letter. Whoever controls the most letters wins the game in this very moreish and slickly presented puzzler.

What's The Word? has enjoyed an explosion of popularity on the App Store over the last month with its simple but addictive proposition. In each of the game's many levels, you'll be presented with four different pictures that have one thing in common. The challenge? To deduce what that word is from the collection of letters that appear in each puzzle. The difficulty ramps up quickly, but there's something here for players of all ages and abilities.

No prizes for guessing what the inspiration for this game might be. Developer LOTUM's take on this sub-genre of word gaming shares more than a name in common with What's The Word? Again, you're looking for the common word between four apparently unconnected photographs – no points for originality, then, but if you've exhausted the content of What's The Word?, this is your next step.

Publishing giant Zynga has released a flood of games in the “With Friends” series, and this particular title is one of its finest. It may owe more than a small debt to the classic game Scrabble, but this social wordplay lets you run multiple games at the same time, so you don't have to wait for granny to hurry up with her turn.

A slightly different game is James Porter's excellent Word of the Rings. The free game offers a series of different categories from television to food types, and your task is to turn the concentric wheels to line up and create related words. There are 25 levels per category, and the challenge gets increasingly complex. A great combination of a general knowledge quiz with brain-bending wordplay, this game comes highly recommended.